


Don’t You Wonder When The Light Begins To Fade?

by ProbablyWastingTime



Series: Chasing After You Is Like A Fairy Tale [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, F/F, Fem!Remus - Freeform, Fem!Sirius, Fem!Wolfstar, Genderbending, Hogwarts Era, Lesbians, Pre-Second War With Voldemort, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 18:16:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6999199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProbablyWastingTime/pseuds/ProbablyWastingTime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before</p>
<p>Remus knows exactly how it ended. It started, like everything does, with James and Sirius.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don’t You Wonder When The Light Begins To Fade?

Sometimes, Remus tries to work out when it started.   
  
She thinks it started on a train in 1971, with a redhead called Lily and her rude friend that she could have got into an argument with, if she weren't so quiet and nervous and desperate for friends.  
  
Or it started when she was sorted into Gryffindor. Though Remus waits for Lily to realise that there are better people than her, Remus only grows closer with her.  
  
Chances are though, that like a lot of things, it started with James and Sirius.  
  
They are both loud and funny and friendly. A complete match for each other, and even at eleven year olds, the older students were convinced that they would be married someday. How could they not, when they were so clearly made to be together?  
  
And even then, Remus wonders if it started that first night at Hogwarts, when Sirius introduced herself and Remus saw a dangerous and exciting glint in her eyes. Or when she and James got into their first fight with Snape and Sirius looked so hurt when Remus ran after Lily.

Or the day that James threw his arm over Remus’ shoulders and called her his friend.

The day they pulled their first prank, all four of them - James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter. The day Sirius called Remus her best friend.   
  
The day Sirius worked out her secret.   
  
Remus was terrified, thought that it would be the end. She cried, and Sirius hugged her and cried as well, told her  _ ‘It’s okay’ _ until Remus could have almost believed her.    
  
And after that, there were a thousand tiny beginnings. The map, becoming animagi, nicknames, stolen kisses with Sirius behind tapestries and in empty dormitories. Years of pranks, jokes, tiny moments of happiness that built up to convince Remus that maybe she could have had a good life.    


* * *

She knows exactly how it ended.    
  
It started, like everything does, with James and Sirius. 

And Remus knows, really, that what Snape did is not their fault. But she wonders, if Sirius had never told Snape to follow her into the Shrieking Shack in fourth year, if they had stopped taunting him that day by the lake in fifth year, when Lily had shouted at them and Remus had watched and done nothing, if Snape had never called Lily  _ mudblood.  _ Maybe this would have never happened. 

She had stared at the picture in the paper. Sirius screaming manically, her wild hair, usually well kept and framing her face in an angelic way, cementing her identity as one of the crazy Black girls, her and Bellatrix, both loyal to Voldemort. 

She couldn’t reconcile that girl with her Sirius. The woman who loved Remus so deeply and truly until she didn’t anymore. Remus wondered if that’s when it happened. She wondered if she could have stopped it. But she also remembered the arguments, the silences, the nights she spent wondering where Sirius had gone and if she was safe, the nights where Sirius must have been thinking the same about her. 

She remembered Sirius’ temper and impulsiveness, and wondered if anyone could have saved Sirius, if it was in her the whole time, even as she fell out with her family and ran away to James’. Maybe Sirius was just one of the crazy Black girls. 

She had stared at the picture in the paper until she couldn’t anymore. Until Sirius’ belongings in their flat had threatened to choke her and she’d needed to scream at someone, but all her friends were either dead or she wished they were. Without thinking, she left her flat in jeans and a tank top and landed, barefoot, into a cold november night outside familiar gates.

Frost crunched under the soles of her feet as she stumbled up the path. She thumped on the doors of the castle, shivering but not trying to warm herself, until someone came to let her in. 

Before she could properly acknowledge who it was, she was pulled into a hug and a scottish accent scolded her; but it was comforting, in a way. Mcgonagall pulled Remus along the halls of Hogwarts into her office, threw a blanket over her bare arms and shoved a mug of tea into her still shaking hands. 

Remus was numb. She wasn’t angry anymore. She wasn’t sad, she wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t anything anymore.

* * *

She walked around the castle under the pretense of clearing her mind, but ended up following the path she always took when she needed to find Lily. She almost stumbled into someone, staring at the grey walls instead of looking where she was going. When she drug her eyes over to the figure and realised who it was, the numbness left her like an electric shock.

Severus had automatically put a hand on her arm to steady her, and his fingers were icy. His eyes were bloodshot and surrounded by shadows. Remus felt tears prickle at her eyes, and had to bring her hand to her mouth as she gasped and choked on sobs. She’d slid down the wall and curled up on the floor, screaming cries of anguish into her knees.

Snape didn’t move and she didn’t look at him, couldn’t hear anything over her shouts. She didn’t care if he watched her lose herself, when she had already lost everything. She was twenty one, barely an adult, and she had just lost everybody she had cared about. She didn’t know how to make anything else matter now.

She thought of a time, years and years ago, where Snape would have done something, even just for Lily’s sake. She thought about what he did to her, how he destroyed everything, and she sobs harder.   


* * *

She packed Sirius’ life into boxes and left her in the attic of Remus’ small cottage in Wales - the one her dad had left her when he died - and tried to leave all the memories there to. It was hard, and involved more alcohol than was strictly healthy, but Remus figured that she already turned into a monster once a month, her body could handle a little bullying from her the rest of the moon’s cycle. 

Remus left the old flat and she pretends she never looked back, even as she tries to work out when it all started. Even as, twelve years later, she twirls the letter - a job offer from Dumbledore - through her fingers; as she stares at the newspaper until the picture makes her want to scream at someone. She leaves Sirius, howling and manic and forever young in a mugshot, on the kitchen table, and tries to tell herself that she is allowed to hate and love someone at the same time. 


End file.
